Leadership skills are a necessity – regardless of your role within the organization. And certainly they are a necessity if you are interested in moving up within your organization or in moving to another organization into a senior leadership role. Some people believe leaders are born with the skills necessary to be leaders and others believe that leaders can be developed. There is no scientific data that shows people are “born leaders” – though possibly there are individuals who have inherent skills for leadership – but undoubtedly those skills need to be cultivated. Either way – whether you believe leaders are born or made – those skills need to be fully developed to be successful and you need to work at being a good leader.
There are many skills that might be categorized as leadership skills. For example, the category leadership skills might include communication, negotiation, managing conflict, performance management, team leadership, strategic planning, etc. The list goes on and on!
Assuming you have a desire to be a leader, how do you go about acquiring new or enhancing current skills? Certainly, taking training seminar on that specific topic is an option. As with any education however, that is just a starting point! What other options exist to increase your knowledge and skills? Let’s explore a few.
Job shadowing
According to Wikipedia ‘….(T)he act of job shadowing is utilized by college students, sometimes within the terms of an internship, or by non-student adults simply wanting to experience a particular career opportunity.’
If you have the option to follow along with another individual who is in a leadership role within the organization, job shadowing is a good way to understand the requirements of the role. It also enables you to get a better understanding of the challenges the person in that role faces on a daily basis.
For one client, job shadowing was part of a mentoring program (mentoring/coaching discussed in Part II). The “leader in training” was assigned a mentor who, as part of the mentoring program, would help the mentee by allowing him/her to watch him work and assist as part of the learning experience. This included participating in meetings, assisting in interviews of new hires, and participating in strategic planning sessions.
Reading books (self-learning)
There are numerous resources to understand what is expected of leaders within an organization and how to be a successful leader. For example, some resources include:
- The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You (John C. Maxwell)
- Leadership 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know (John C. Maxwell)
- Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep it From Happening to You (Sydney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, Andrew Campbell)
- The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader: Becoming the Person Others Will Want to Follow (John C. Maxwell)
- The Leadership Challenge, 4th Edition (James M. Kouzes, Barry Z. Posner)
- The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World (Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, Alexander Grashow)
Obviously, there are many others! Please add to the list if you have other such books you would recommend (add to Comments field below).
Another option may be to read biographies on individuals who are considered, generally, to be excellent leaders – such as Jack Welch, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Henry Ford, Martin Luther King, and Sam Walton – to name just a few! You may or may not agree with their accomplishments, but there is something about them that attracts people to follow their lead. What makes them “good leaders?” What attributes do they have? What behaviors do they display?
However, reading alone does not provide you with enough skills and knowledge to ensure success as a leader. Combine this option with other options, such as obtaining a mentor or taking classes, to ensure that you have a better idea on how to put to work what you are reading in the various leadership books.
Think about some of the organizations where you have worked: who, in your opinion, was a good leader, and why? And who would you consider not a good leader, and why? Please share your thoughts/stories in the Comments field below.
Online resources/blogs/portals/newsletters
There are numerous online resources such as blogs, portals and newsletters to subscribe to written by experts in various fields. For example, Great Leadership blog covers general leadership information; Germane Insights blog covers leadership through the art and science of psychology and has some great articles focused on women in leadership roles; Center for Creative Leadership Leading Effectively newsletter offers an online newsletter on leading effectively; and Linked 2 Leadership offers numerous management and leadership topics. These are a few sources to get you started. Search on the Web for other sources in leadership. Do you know of others that are worthwhile? Please share in the Comments field below.
As with the Reading books option above, online resources should not be considered the only way to increase your skills and knowledge in leadership. Be careful about your selections for information – there are tons of resources on the Internet and not all are valid. Online blogs also offer you the opportunity to share your thoughts with others through Comments and make valuable connections.
Online sources are a great way to keep up to date with current trends/topics in the leadership field.
Next up: We continue with Options for Acquiring Leadership Skills: Part II
Hello Frode,
Thanks for your comment and for reading the blog. Hope you find it useful and informative. I have checked out your blog, http://www.nevermindthemanager.com. Will be creating an RSS Feed and will keep up with you too!
Best regards,
Gina
I like this blog post. I am new to your blog and find it interesting to spend time here. I am very interested in growing as a leader. One of my best advices is to dare to try. You will read a lot about different things you can do as a leader. Some work, some don’t. And you won’t know until you try. I am a big fan of reading blogs and that is why I found your blog. Getting ready to read part 2 now. 🙂
Hi Gwyn,
Somewhere in my vast collection of books and articles (it’s like a library here!) – I have something about 360 that may address what you very accurately noted as potential issues in your message. I’m going to dig around for information and will share if I find.
Best,
Gina
I like the notion of 360 feedback processes because they give you information on a number of levels and from various perspectives. There is a bit of a risk though and that is that those you ask to provide you with feedback could have a personal agenda that has nothing to do with you. If they like you they can simply tell you what you want to hear. If they don’t like you, well, I think you get the point. So choosing people to provide honest feedback is important.
Thanks so much for you kind remarks about my blog. I’m very flattered and particularly glad to have another sharp person (you) to noodle around with 🙂
Hi Gwyn,
Thanks for your comment (and for re-tweeting the post on Twitter!). First, I will check out the book you recommended. Always interested in book recommendations – thanks!
I agree completely with “know thyself!” I have done the Myers-Briggs myself and got quite a bit out of the results! Others who have taken it have noted that they find it quite enlightening. I haven’t taken any Emotional Intelligence profiles – I think it would be quite interesting though.
In addition, it might be helpful to do a 360 to understand how others perceive you also. Thoughts?
These combined (“know thyself” and 360) will likely help the individual understand where his/her strengths lie, how to develop the non-strength areas (weaknesses), and, by providing them a better understanding of themselves and how others perceive them – will make them a better leader overall.
By the way – I love your blog – specially the title! I have subscribed to the feed.
Thanks again for your comments and thoughts.
Best,
Gina
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Hi Gina,
This is a great topic! I have a couple of thoughts to add to the already rich mix for your consideration.
With respect to books, I like Charles Handy’s “21 Ideas for Managers”. It is written in plain language with lots of examples.
As well, I think that before we go about acquiring leadership skills we should first do some “know thyself” work. When we are new in a leadership role, it is easy to discount or undervalue what we already know how to do. And, it really helps to acknowledge what drives us and how we look at the world before we foist ourselves on unsuspecting followers. 🙂
Lots of information about ourselves can come out of something like a Myers-Briggs profile or and Emotional intelligence quotient and these are available on-line for fairly nominal fees.